


Hands On

by Huggle



Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: Angst, Clever Oswald Cobblepot, Guilty Jim Gordon, M/M, Manhandling, Oswald Knows What He Wants, and he gets it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-09
Updated: 2020-06-09
Packaged: 2021-03-03 23:33:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24633889
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Huggle/pseuds/Huggle
Summary: Oswald keeps turning up in Jim’s life, and there always seems to be a situation that Jim has to suddenly protect him from.It takes him a while to get it, but to be fair to him...it’s been a hell of a week.
Relationships: Oswald Cobblepot/Jim Gordon
Comments: 8
Kudos: 50





	Hands On

**Author's Note:**

> My first Gotham fic (only just started watching it :) ) and written for a prompt on the Dreamwidth meme.

Jim...doesn’t know where he stands with Oswald.

He doesn’t know that he wants to stand with him _at all_ , but they seem bound, now. There’s a sense of inevitability there that burns him; he’s resisted everyone telling him Gotham can’t be fixed, everyone telling him to come around to how things are in the city, everyone telling him he will eventually, or end up in some alley with a bullet in his skull.

But with Oswald, it’s different, like he’s been washed out to sea, and he’s trying to get back to the shore, but he seems to be spending more time trying to keep afloat, treading water to conserve his energy and keep from drowning.

There’s a little voice that says if he stopped swimming against the tide, he wouldn’t have to worry, but that voice sounds like Oswald so Jim decides not to listen to it.

++

The next time he sees Oswald, this is what happens.

Harvey’s dragging his feet, because he doesn’t want this case; it’s a _celebrity_ case, and they’re a goddamn headache, to quote his partner, and that’s why Jim is at the car, beeping the door open, when he feels like he’s not alone.

He whips around and there Oswald is, smiling at him, all sharp and sweet in the same instant and Jim finds himself backing up until he makes himself stop.

For one thing, he is not scared of Oswald Cobblepot.

For another, even if he was he is not about to show him. Something tells him that letting Oswald see any sign of weakness would be a big mistake, but in the same moment Jim knows it’s a little late for that.

It’s just...difficult to concentrate in Oswald’s presence, for a hundred reasons he can’t, or, okay, maybe won’t, unroll. A little distance seems wise.

“I didn’t mean to put you in danger,” Oswald’s saying. “By suddenly appearing at the station, like that. Although it did seem to be a case of out of the frying pan, into the fire. Which was not my intention.”

It’s seems like a roundabout apology that is not one at all, Oswald’s way of saying he nearly got Jim killed but it was to save him, so hey, it’s all good.

Before he can answer, because it’s not all good, even if it did get him out of being arrested, it also got him gut shot and chased down like a wounded animal, when he hears someone screaming a name that makes him cringe.

“PENGUIN!”

They both look, and there’s a guy, six foot, built like the side of a brick warehouse, running right at them, and he doesn’t look like it’s to give them a hug.

It’s instinct, that sees Jim put his hand on the back of Oswald’s neck, scoop him out of the way, so that he’s on one side of Jim and the bull charging at them is on the other, and it’s instinct that has him swerving back when the guy throws a punch that shatters the driver window.

The guy howls, fist maybe broken but definitely bloody, but then he roars and swings at Jim again.

Because Jim’s in the way, and then he ducks under the guy’s arm, punches him in the kidneys and, when the guy doubles over, slams his fist hard into his jaw.

He might be big but he goes down anyway and Oswald gives what seems like an almost theatrical sigh of relief.

“Thank you, Detective. You seem to be rescuing me a lot, lately.”

“Twice,” Jim says. “It was twice.” And he isn’t even sure the last time counts as a rescue since Oswald landed them both in hot water because he couldn’t keep his damn mouth shut.

There’s a ruckus by the precinct door, and Harvey comes running out, gun drawn, and Jim shrugs when his partner stops to look down at Goliath to Jim’s David.

“Gonna need a fucking crane,” he says. “You couldn’t have talked him into a cell? What is it with you and every deadbeat in this city wanting a piece of you?”

“Not of me,” Jim says and turns, but there’s nobody behind him.

Oswald’s gone, and Harvey’s looking at him like maybe he did get punched in the head so hard he just doesn’t remember it.

++

He isn’t expecting the midnight summons from Oswald’s new boss, either.

Apparently the guy thinks he’s Jim’s new boss as well, and Jim knows he’s treading a wire thin line here.

A hundred or so feet up, with no safety net, and a tank of bloodthirsty piranha right underneath him.

But he goes, anyway, and the Don is there, and so is Oswald, surprise, and all they want Jim to know is that if he gets a call this week to investigate a shooting outside one of the _other_ Don’s casinos, he need not be his usual professional self.

Jim grits his teeth. It’s not like any of the eye for an eye tactics the two men employ against each other ever lead anywhere; witnesses go dumb or disappear or if they did see anything, they suddenly don’t remember and so he’s used to some cases just...going dead.

This would probably have been the same, but now Maroni has pretty much told Jim that he’s had the shooting arranged, and what the hell is Jim supposed to do with that when the mafia boss has told him to do nothing at all?

Oswald shuffles over to him, a look of sympathy on his face. “I’m sure you’ll find a way to satisfy Don Maroni’s orders, and your conscience, Jim.”

He scoffs. “I wish I was.”

And then it happens; one minute they’re standing there in the dark, rain just starting to dribble down on them, when the night is suddenly all fire and noise and heat, and Jim grabs for Oswald, brings him down to the ground, and holds him there.

The car goes up in one piece, shooting a good number of feet in the air, but it comes down in many; burning twisted pieces of metal shower them like shrapnel, and Jim figures it’s only that they were only so far from the exploded vehicle that stops them getting hurt beyond a few cuts and singes.

He rolls onto his side when it seems like it’s over; the burning wreckage is so bright it hurts to look at it.

But Maroni is alive, most of his men are alive, and they’re running around, yelling, aiming guns into the night.

Jim looks back to Oswald, and he’s smiling. “I owe you again,” he says, and Jim feels something go on edge inside him as he stands and then helps Oswald to his feet.

The shooting doesn’t happen. Jim spends all week on edge, and finds his relief short lived when he and Harvey make it to Friday with just run of the mill homicides that don’t appear, on the face of it, to have anything to do with Gotham’s warring mafia families (even if he knows they do, someway, somehow, because it seems like everything in this city does).

Maroni won’t let what happened go, so when he does strike back, Jim becomes convinced it’ll be worse.

++

He gets home that night to a quiet apartment, empty since Barbara is gone for a few days to review the collection of a family looking to donate some important art, and he finds himself not minding.

Despite not having to do half a job on a shooting at the whim of Maroni, he’s wound up tight, and he knows if Barbara was there, he’d be poor company.

Jim tugs his tie loose, kicks off his shoes, starts for the liquor cabinet.

And then draws his gun and aims in one motion, heart racing, because there’s a figure silhouetted against the window. 

Sitting on their couch like...well, like it’s his couch. His apartment, and Jim knows that outline, even before he reaches for the light switch and flips it on.

Oswald grins at him, and Jim...fuck, Jim wants to shoot him.

“What are you doing in here,” he asks, instead.

Oswald gets up, limps over. “I feel I should make up to you for saving my life...four times, now, isn’t it? A simple thank you doesn’t seem enough.”

“It’s plenty,” Jim says, like he’s forcing the words out through his teeth. “Breaking into my apartment doesn’t really come across as gratitude.”

Oswald makes a kind of hand wave gesture as if it’s the thought that counts, and then he’s three feet, two feet from Jim, not stopping, and Jim again finds himself backing away, unsure why, and…

Oswald trips. Or slips, or stumbles, or has a fit of the vapours, Jim doesn’t know, but he suddenly has his arm around Oswald’s waist, the other man pulled up tight against him, and Oswald’s fists clenching his jacket.

Oswald’s light, but the position is awkward and Jim has to kind of yank him upright again before Oswald slips or Jim’s back tells him angry tales about it in the morning.

“Thank you, detective,” he pants, and there’s just something in his eye, and then Jim gets it.

“You…. What….”

Somehow, Oswald has….arranged all of this. The hulk guy outside the precinct. The exploding car. And now his sudden lost of balance.

Every incident has resulted in Jim touching him. Or moving him, or, okay, manhandling him.

With very few exceptions, Jim’s sure that nothing really happens around or to Oswald that he hasn’t somehow engineered.

Oswald carefully steps out of Jim’s embrace...hold, dammit, his hold, and looks almost coy.

“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean, detective. But if I did know, if we both knew, then….”

He looks towards the bedroom, and Jim isn’t sure if the guy has the plans to their apartment, or if he’s been nosing around in here before he, Jim, came home, but no. 

That’s his and Barbara’s bed, and he has to wonder what difference that makes when he’s suddenly aware he’s going to fuck Oswald, probably out here on the couch; not doing it in their bed doesn’t make it any less awful that he’s doing it at all.

Except...he isn’t really sure that is his and Barbara’s bed anymore, because if it was he surely wouldn’t be about to do what he’s about to do.

Which is push Oswald back; not hard enough to hurt or destablise him. Just hard enough to make it clear how this is going to go, and he can tell from the way Oswald’s breathing picks up, the way he bites his lip, that it’s going just where he wants.

He keeps pushing until Oswald’s knees hit the couch, but grabs him before he can falls own.

Stripping him, he does slowly. Lays each item carefully aside, because it seems right if out of place with everything else, and then he pushes Oswald down.

Kisses him hard, biting, grabs hard enough at those shoulders, his hips, his thighs, to leave bruises, and when he finally jerks them both off, hand around them both, he isn’t any more gentle for touching himself in that moment.

He’s rougher, if anything, and then Oswald’s head falls back, his thin neck a pale line that Jim wants to bite.

So he does.

If Oswald doesn’t want Maroni to see that hickey, he better use some make up to cover it up for a few days.

++

Oswald must wake before he does, because he finds himself alone and naked on the couch, though there is a blanket drawn over him and actually tucked in.

The door is locked, the alarm turned on, and Jim sits in the dark for a while before finally heading for the shower.

Even then, after, he doesn’t go to bed. Instead he goes right back to the couch, and that’s where he spends the rest of the night.


End file.
